Across the street from the American Embassy in Oslo lies the Norwegian
Nobel Institute, which houses the Norwegian Nobel Committee, responsible
for awarding the notorious Nobel Peace Prize.

The members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee are elected for a period
of 6 years. There are 5 members in total, and they are elected such that
2 or 3 members are up for election every 3 years. The committee is elected
by the Norwegian Parliament. The committee members have, since the start
of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901, all but two, had partisan affiliation.
The committee has all too often been leftist dominated. One might wonder
how anyone in his right mind could have assigned the appointment of such
a committee to the Norwegian Parliament.

The Nobel Peace Prize is often considered to be the highest ranking of
the Nobel prizes. You might wonder why. It is awarded by a politically
elected committee, whose members' political backgrounds all too often
have been dubious, to say the least. The other prizes aren't polluted
by politics in the same way, perhaps with the exception of the literature
prize, which should give them the higher rank. The Peace Prize is received
from the hands of a mere committee chairman. The other prizes are received
from the hands of a head of state, namely the King of Sweden. And last
but not least; a lot of the committee decisions are clear proofs of poor
judgment.

Wilson

What are the merits of the Norwegian Nobel Committee? For 1919 U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson was awarded the prize. He was the founder of the League
of Nations, which failed. He redesigned Europe from behind his desk, thinking
that would actually work out. His bad solution was a major cause of World
War II. Apart from that he did help Europeans win a war, and honor to
him for that, but that was not why he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1969 the prize was awarded to the International Labor Organization,
an organization promoting "social justice", trade union rights,
and labor legislation. This organization is an advocate of "positive"
rights, in the sense that employees have the right to something that belongs
to employers, or to the tax payers.

In 1973 Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho were awarded the prize for ending
the Vietnam war. As John McCain so eloquently put it, the wrong side won
the Vietnam war. The biggest problem with the Vietnam war was that American
forces were not allowed to win it. Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for
the peace accord was absolutely, without a doubt, bad judgment.

The prize was awarded to Amnesty International in 1977. This organization
seems more concerned with capital punishment for serious crimes in the
United States than the death penalty for petty crimes in China. Lately,
Amnesty International has tended to believe that "positive"
rights, such as the right to a paid vacation, are as important as "negative"
rights, such as the freedom from torture. Of course, this is how the organization
is today, but it still says something about an organization which has
the "glory" and "honor" of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Mikhail Gorbachev was awarded the prize in 1990. Some people actually
believe he brought an end to the Cold War. However, Ronald Reagan left
him little choice. If someone should have been awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize for ending the Cold War, it should have been Ronald Reagan. The
leftist committee didn't seem to care about that. Instead it awarded the
prize to the man who later founded Green Cross International, an organization
which today is part of the global governance movement. By the way, Gorbachev's
ambition was actually to save communism.

Arafat

Yasser Arafat was awarded the prize in 1994. That decision speaks for
itself. At least a member of the committee had the decency to step down
in protest.

In 1995 Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World
Affairs were awarded the prize for their work against nuclear arms. The
press release ended with the following sentence: "It is the Committee's
hope that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1995 to Rotblat and Pugwash
will encourage world leaders to intensify their efforts to rid the world
of nuclear weapons." Do Rotblat, Pugwash, and the Norwegian Nobel
Committee believe that you can pass a law to make nuclear arms vanish
from the face of the earth? Fact is that the knowledge of nuclear arms
will always exist, and as it does, the world would be safer if civilized
nations have nuclear arms instead of only "rogue" states or
organizations having them, maybe without our knowing it before it is too
late.

Another peacenik award came in 1997. Jody Williams and her International
Campaign to Ban Landmines got the prize. Yes, landmines harm civilians
years after the end of a war. However, war is serious business, and it
is material in a war to protect one's military in an effective way, and
to prevent the advancement of enemy forces. Abandoning the use of landmines
is in this sense bad war business. But peaceniks don't care about such
protection. They just care about their non-violence utopia.

The latest prize went to the United Nations and Secretary-General Kofi
Annan for "their work for a better organized and more peaceful world".
What is a "better organized" world? Of course, we need a common
framework within which we can interact in an ever more globalized world.
What we do not need is the world of the global governance movement. The
global governance agenda is a threat to liberty. Is the Norwegian Nobel
Committee embracing the global governance agenda? There should be no doubt
that it isn't. However, we do not know. This month the U.N. is holding
the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey,
Mexico. At this conference the U.N. may be embarking on leading the world
on the road to serfdom through global tax policy and cooperation. The
U.N. certainly has been preparing for it.

Why is this leftist prize so high ranking? It beats me!

By the way, you might have heard of the announcement of a nomination
of U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair for
this year's prize as the February 1 postmark deadline closed. Forget about
it! Today's committee has two members from the Labor Party, one member
from the Socialist Left Party, and one member being a bishop from Norway's
religious left. The latter publicly asked that the bombing of Afghanistan
be stopped, and that we should sit down and talk instead. All in all,
the committee has 4 clear leftists. Probably, for all they care, Bush
is a warmonger. They would never award Bush, or Blair for that matter,
let alone for the war on terrorism. That would indeed be too good to be
true!

Jorn K. Baltzersen is a Norwegian conservative. He lives in Oslo,
Norway, where he works as a senior consultant of information technology.
He can be reached at jornbalt@pvv.org.